


When Alteration Finds

by waldorph



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 1518 Spoilers, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, do not copy to another site
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:21:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27519037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waldorph/pseuds/waldorph
Summary: There are times Castiel feels so young, as though he only started drawing breath in that moment he breathed life into Dean.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 63
Kudos: 340





	When Alteration Finds

**Author's Note:**

> Am I using a Shakespeare quote as the title of this for MAXIMUM douche points? Of course I am.

The soul they’re looking for is that of the Righteous Man. Castiel falls into Hell with his garrison like a landslide, unerring and righteous and certain, above all else. Later, he will think this was the last time he was ever certain of anything. In the moment, he narrows his eyes and follows the sound sweet, like a string plucked on a harp. His brothers and sisters die around him, joyful in death, paving his way even as demons fill the expanse of hell like a rising tide. 

Castiel’s hand closes around Dean Winchester’s soul and the contact is percussive, sends a shockwave, and Castiel loses moments just staring in wonder at his father’s creation. At the Righteous Man, who is called back to serve, to save the world. 

Later, years later, he’ll shudder at how easily he had thought that of anyone. He’ll feel regret like a knife that he ever thought being called to service was holy. He will watch this man die on the altar of the world again, and again, and he will throw himself in the way, and he will make mistake after mistake. 

But now. Here. Castiel’s grip is so tight, so immovable, that the places where they are in contact glows hot and white and feels like a brand more than anything else. He doesn’t know whose. 

He crouches in the space of a pine box, and he heals with tender care the soul’s vessel while it continues to wrench against his grasp. Green eyes, freckles, a sharp jaw, all this he creates anew. And when he grips the body and pours the soul, shrieking in rage and fury and fear, back into it, he leaves behind a mark. 

* * *

He takes the vessel when it becomes clear that Dean Winchester cannot, or will not, understand his unmediated voice. There’s a small part of him that suspects Dean is simply refusing to _listen_. A decade later, that part of him will have grown into fond exasperation, but be no less convinced. 

He practices speaking to a couple of humans. They understand him. This body is...sufficient, for the task at hand. 

When he speaks to Dean Winchester he feels like he’s struggling for every word. He crowds him in the dark, sees the doubt, the hurt, a soldier’s wounds. It is a herculean effort force past the scratching in his throat: “You don’t think you deserve to be saved.” 

Dean doesn’t believe in good things for himself, is exhausted and afraid and not comforted as the humans they’ve encountered in the past have ever been. Humans have always been awe-struck to find themselves in the presence of the angelic host, but as far as he is aware there has always been a measure of ease, or trust. 

Dean’s soul doesn’t recognize Castiel, though his vessel bears the evidence of the truth Castiel speaks; that he gripped Dean tight and raised him from perdition. 

When Dean is in bed, Castiel stands on the grass outside of Bobby Singer’s house and feels the cool, damp breeze on his face, the chill of his feet as the dew-covered grass sinks against him. There are so many stars in the sky, and he feels, impossibly, at the start of something. 

His vessel coughs, and with a frown he sticks out his tongue and swipes his thumb over the tip. 

A small yellow petal curls forlornly against his skin before being caught on the wind. 

* * *

He dies. He dies, he forgets, he’s corrupted, sacrificed, atoning, dying - throwing his lot in with the Winchesters is a never-ending cycle of pain, and horror, and inside him, over the course of years, tiny flowers bloom, and take root in his lungs, and choke him when he speaks for too long. He’s not human. Whatever this is cannot kill him. 

If it is a consequence of standing by Sam and Dean, then he will bear it happily. 

* * *

The trouble is, being an important person to Sam and Dean means sharing in pain. Becoming one of their weaknesses, becoming a source of agony as much as ever being a source of comfort. 

There are times he feels so young, as though he only started drawing breath in that moment he breathed life into Dean. 

He makes mistakes and he is forgiven, and his heart aches and he does his best though that hardly ever seems to be enough. 

But sometimes Dean smiles. Sometimes he laughs, and buys Castiel cheeseburgers, or tries to get him laid, or wraps an arm around him, all casual comfortable contact that seems effortless but Castiel knows isn’t. Sometimes, when he looks at Dean, his heart feels so full, and his joy is so immense, that Castiel has to check to make sure his feet are on the ground.

Then there are the times that Dean prays, desperate, and Castiel does not think that there is a power in creation--not God, not the Darkness, not the Empty, not Death--that could stop him answering. The times when he can’t the flowers burble up between his lips, soaring out of him with each wracking cough. 

And he always finds his way home.

* * *

He asks Sam once. It’s eight months later when Sam tells him about Japanese lore, a curse, something about love. He offers to look into it more, apologizes for the delay--he only really remembered because he found a sticky note in a book they abandoned during one of the crises they were facing down. 

Castiel smiles, and thinks of how good Sam is, how earnest. That this boy was meant to be Lucifer’s vessel. 

“I don’t remember why I asked,” he tells Sam, who laughs and makes a face. 

“Well, now you know,” Sam says. “So if it comes up again...we’ve got something.” 

* * *

It’s Crowley who gives it a name when he finds him doubled over, coughing. 

“Hanahaki Disease.” 

“Bless you,” Castiel groans, wiping his mouth. Sometimes the coughing is so bad he has to vomit, and of all the things his vessel does, that has to be one of his least favorite. 

“First of all: fuck you. Second of all: that’s what you’ve got. Nice little trick of God’s, you love a thing so much it’ll kill you. Literally, choke the life out of you unless you cut the flowers out or, most unlikely, whoever it is loves you back.” 

Castiel wipes his eyes and clears his throat, looking over reluctantly. Even when Crowley had something interesting to say, it was unwise to seem interested. 

“Is it Meg?” Crowley asks, smirking. “You and she have a little star-crossed lovers thing going.” 

“It is not Meg,” Castiel snaps, which in retrospect was the exact wrong thing to say. Crowley’s face goes tight, the way it does when he’s being serious, a strange sort of pinched expression. He rubs the palm of one hand with the thumb of the other, looking away, scanning the area. 

“He’s never going to love you back,” he says after a beat. The kindness in his voice is unbearable. “He doesn’t know how, let alone the whole performative toxic masculinity thing he’s got going on. Couldn’t make it work with the yoga chick, he’s not going to make it work with anyone.” 

Castiel doesn’t say anything, just clears his throat. In the motel, Sam and Dean are sleeping. In two hours, they’ll wake up, and the hunt for Lucifer will begin again. But in these pre-dawn hours everything is quiet, Castiel’s breaths soft breezes over the flowers inside him, threatening to choke the life from him. 

“It’ll kill you,” Crowley tells him. “It’ll kill you, unless you cut out the love.” 

“Would you?” Castiel asks, curious. 

Crowley inhales sharply through his nose, shrugging his shoulders and not making eye contact. “I’m not an angel,” he says. 

“It can’t kill me,” he tells Crowley. “I can heal it before it does.” 

Crowley nods, and then, with a sideways look and a smirk, launches into some recitation: _‘Love is not love which alters it when alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove: O no! It is an ever fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken’.”_

Castiel just looks at him. 

“Shakespeare. Sonnet 116,” Crowley explains, and then he’s gone. 

Castiel finds it later, in a library somewhere outside of Tuscon. _Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out, even to the edge of doom._

* * *

He thinks Mary knew. She says to him once, “I told him when he was a baby that angels would watch over him. I’m glad you have.” She hugs him, and then puts her hand on his chest and smiles her warm smile, and Castiel thinks: he has your smile. 

* * *

“Does he know you love him?” Rowena asks, sidling up around him. He wonders if it’s genetic, that kind of slinking. 

“No,” Castiel says, measuring out ingredients for her. “He doesn’t.”

She juts her jaw, touching the tip of her tongue to the corner of her lips. “I can cut it out of you. You’ll still like him well enough, still be able to love Jack and Sam, though fuck knows why you’d want to.

“You won’t be able to love him anymore. But--you’re fading, and soon you won’t be able to fight it off.” 

Castiel looked at her. 

“Or don’t, see if I care, you silly idiot,” she huffed, and threw something into her cauldron that made it spark. 

* * *

The things, he loves Dean. The little yarrow flowers inside him are rooted deep in his lungs, creeping up his esophagus, and it doesn’t matter. He knows that it makes him look weak to Lucifer, to Chuck, to anyone left, but he loves Dean without expectation of reciprocation. He loves him and he cares for him and that never means that he doesn’t hurt him. But it means that he cannot feel owed anything that Dean can’t give. 

He loves, and it’s an act, a verb, and the parts of him that are more human fantasize about pressing Dean against walls and kissing him, pushing him down into bed, but if all Dean can feel towards him is a bond of brotherhood, Castiel is happy to accept that. He is happy to walk beside him, and protect him when he can, and beg forgiveness. 

But it’s hard to remember all of that when everything is falling apart, worse than it ever has before. Jack is so much more than Castiel had ever hoped to find. He loves him fiercely, and he understands why people divorce, pledge vows and then break them. 

He loves Dean. But there are times when he cannot be near him, when all they do is catch each other’s edges, when Dean is obsessive and cruel and Castiel hurts for him because in the months where they racing towards God’s destruction Dean resembles nothing so much as that soul Castiel found on the rack in Hell. All agony and anger and fear and there is no time to wrap his wings around him and try to lull the rabbit-fast beating of his heart. He can only do what he thinks is right. 

And then Death is pounding on the door, and Castiel can feel another sprout of yarrow take root just below his adam’s apple, and if he’s going to die, and he is going to die, he wants that moment of happiness. 

* * *

He knows Dean doesn’t understand, he can see him trying to decide what gear to be in - defensive, strong, pep-talk, sacrificial lamb, jokester, and Castiel take advantage of that. 

There is no kindness in this kind of confession, but he isn’t lying when he tells Dean that he knows that having isn’t the only way to be joyful in this. That speaking it outloud; telling the truth, knowing that he is dying in the way that they have all died for each other before; as an act of love itself...is liberating. There are flowers choking him and tears in his eyes, and the Empty screaming in her void in victorious hunger and Billie at the door. 

And there is Dean, standing so, so still, his face tight. He is still the most beautiful thing Castiel has ever seen. He is perfect, and he is good, and kind, and Castiel learned to love because Dean showed him the way.

Maybe he should have said it more, not left it until now, but there are tiny yarrow flowers blooming in his lungs with every word he says, branching out, choking him, and he thinks this is the sort of thing you only get to say once. 

“I love you,” he says, and it’s transcendental, being in love in that moment, exposed and standing in the truth of it even when it’s goodbye, and Dean’s eyes are full of tears and he’s telling him not to, but Castiel thinks that his best choice is not listening to Dean when he’s being stupid. There’s no other way, and Castiel finds that he wants this. 

Billie bursts through the door, and the empty slithers through the wall, hungry. Dean is running on fumes, and Castiel has just emotionally sucker-punched him, and it’s easy to say good-bye, to push him to the side.

He feels no fear, no remorse. There’s only joy as he takes a breath, the first deep breath he’s taken in eleven years, meeting the Empty with no regrets. 

He takes a breath, and then Empty is laughing in his ears even as it pulls him into its void.

He took a _breath._

**Author's Note:**

> Yarrow - Everlasting love  
> If you liked this, I have a podcast about spn with rageprufrock. We got drunk and high and screamed about this episode the night Biden won the election. It's VERY aggressive, but you should check it out - [Ride or Die Podcast](http://rideordiepodcast.com).  
> You can also find me on twitter [@waldorph](https://twitter.com/waldorph)


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